Voodoo management announced today that Wu-Tang might not be performing after all. A statement issued earlier today reads:

Wu Tang Clan may not be able to honor their commitment to perform at this weekend’s 8th annual VOODOO MUSIC EXPERIENCE, event producers have just learned. The organizers wanted to make the public aware of this in advance as they continue in their efforts to secure a definitive answer from the group’s representatives.

“Though the band had initially committed contractually to this performance months ago, in the past few days their management representatives have been unable to give us a straight answer on whether or not they’ll be performing this weekend. At this point I have no idea if they’ll show up or not,” says VOODOO MUSIC EXPERIENCE producer/founder Stephen Rehage.

I doubt this will float well with a lot of festival goers.

This is a big week for music in New Orleans. Before Voodoo Fest gets underway this weekend, The Decemberists will grace us with their presence at House of Blues this evening. You may remember that the band was actually supposed to play Voodoo Fest last year but backed out of the show following Hurricane Katrina. Strangely, they’re making their return to NOLA just days before this year’s Voodoo Fest. That’s OK though, because I’d much prefer for them to perform a full set. Doors open at 7 and I believe tickets are still available for about $20.

One Eyed Jacks recently played host to N.Y.C. based singer-songwriter Nina Nastasia. She, and her backing band, played an intimate, haunting, and fragile set to a handful of attendees, who may or may not have known of Nastasia before, but surely left as fans. After being converted by her astonishing voice and magically structured songs, as well, we had the opportunity to speak with Nastasia. In a narrow back stage room, we spoke until “Rock-n-Roll Karaoke” drowned out all hopes for conversation.

Nastasia has been playing music for about 12 years. She began playing “seriously” sometime after moving from L.A. to New York. “I had a guitar. I had a friend who was a singer and a songwriter.” She continued, “I was influenced by him…It was fun. I never really sang before that.” Despite her relatively late start as a songwriter, Nina has, in the years since, released four albums, including the most recent release On Leaving.

“I don’t really think about how or why I write or anything like that… Usually I write music on the guitar first…It is always the music first…then the lyrics go, then the music will go.” And when talking about her latest release, she added “It’s usually not just a finished thing” which may explain why the songs that appear on On Leaving sound so seamless. No wasted space, or noise, appears on the album. Despite the modesty and bashfulness Nastasia portrays when she proclaims, “I don’t have any philosophies [to writing]” it is obvious that all has fallen into its intended place on On Leaving.

Nastasia does, nevertheless, eventually admit that she is “a lot more thoughtful” than she used to be. “I used to not care,” she adds before confessing: “I always feel like I sound silly talking about my stuff. It’s a funny thing to try to explain or make someone understand.”

As she finished that last statement the heavy riffs of live, rock-n-roll band “karaoke” came spilling through the thin wall and shiny curtain that separated the stage and us. She laughs, “It’s really quiet back here.” (We had picked this spot assuming it would be the quietest.) My tape-recorder, I knowingly presumed, was being drowned in distortion, so I asked what was to be my last question. To which she responded, “I used to do short stories. I haven’t in a while and I would like to do that some more.”

ND: So it’s very weird. He had problems with his manager, who was involved with the Hells Angels and used to work for the C.I.A. He was stealing money from him. [Hendrix] was trying to fire him. So you know all these little things make you wonder.

AM: He seems…Well you know with the Bob Marley and John Lennon conspiracies, I get those, because they were both somewhat political figures.

ND: Yeah.

AM: But Jimi Hendrix kind of seems out there, you know?

ND: Yeah. The Jimi Hendrix was more his manager’s doing. The manager was a thug and wanted Jimi’s money and stuff. But it wasn’t like Jimi Hendrix was a counter-revolutionary like Bob Marley, who really was shot. He wasn’t killed, but he was shot at a festival. He was shot in the leg by a Jamaican warlord or something. The son of a C.I.A. agent apparently gave Bob Marley a pair of boots with a steel toe. Um, I mean, a steel pin was in the toe. He put them on and pricked his foot. He got this bad infection, which people say came from playing soccer, but which the book says came from this shoe, this gift. Then he went to Switzerland and had this Nazi doctor, who starved him to death, basically; because he was avoiding traditional medicine until the last minute. So like this doctor [laugh] this Nazi doctor killed him.

AM: Wow.

ND: Pretty insane. Pretty funny, well not funny, but entertaining, I guess.

AM: Yeah. It definitely has some amount of humor in it, though.

ND: Yeah.

AM: So it kind of seems to me that in some of your lyrics…Since we’re talking about political figures in music. There seems to be an amount of politics in your lyrics, but it doesn’t seem to be too overt. Do you agree?

ND: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, that’s the nail on the head right there. I’m trying to think about things and to be conscientious, I guess, of current events. But I’m not trying to be, like, proselytizing or trying to indoctrinate anyone. I’m just trying to think about it and have a dialogue. But use, like, metaphor and narrative as an analogy to what’s going on. I don’t like it when people try to preach to you and tell you what to think or what’s wrong; because it’s always more complex than that. I think just painting a little picture of the way you see things is sometimes more effective, I guess.

AM: So you prefer to pose a question? Why is it like this?

ND: Yeah, and using…Shouldering it, I guess, in a little story, a little innocuous narrative that doesn’t seem…But, you know, I’m kind of getting past that too. That was definitely that record. I was feeling like things were pretty messed up. Pretty messed up state of affairs in the world. Of course, there always are, but I felt like addressing it in that certain way. I think I’m beyond that too. The new songs that I’m writing, some of them are still in the narrative thing, a lot of them are just more abstract. More abstract than the last record even.

AM: What issues are you dealing with in those terms?

ND: In the newer material?

AM: Yeah.

ND: I’m trying to think of examples. I mean, a lot of it is just reflections on being, like being alive, I guess, and the weird little intricacies of that. You know, that fact is pretty insane concept, if you think about it. Existence… I think there are lots of ways to unravel that. There is a lot to pick apart in song. Some of them are stories of things that have happened to me or to people I’ve known, but there also couched in a weird, bizarro world narrative. Like this one song is about this…I don’t know. Fuck. I’m not really good at defending my lyrics.

AM: It’s hard to talk about something you’ve written.

ND: Yeah.

AM: Because it’s kind of like, “Well, it’s already done. That’s what it is.”

ND: Yeah, exactly. I kind of feel like I’ve already done my part, you know.

AM: Oh, there was something I wanted to ask you, it kind of fell off from me. There was something you mentioned that I just wanted to bring up again. Never mind. Well, in terms of material on the next album, I know you’re into hip-hop and there is one song on the album that has a rap. It’s really good. Can we expect to see more of that?

ND: I’ve definitely thought about it. I don’t know if it would seem like a gimmick. I don’t want to have a token rap song on the record. But if it works, if it makes sense, and it seems natural, we’ll do it. On the last record it definitely wasn’t a forced thing or contrived. It was really natural. And we had that song. We were in L.A. and we knew both of those rappers. We actually did a couple shows where we did that song. This was actually before this band existed, but it was Jamie and I. It just made sense to put it on the record and it was thematically adapt. It was also a cool different thing to have these guys rapping on the record.

AM: It comes across well. Who are the two rappers?

ND: Subtitle and Bus Driver.

AM: Are they putting out their own material?

ND: Yeah, they put out records. Bus Driver just got signed to Epitaph. He’s going to be putting out a bigger record this fall, which is cool for him because he’s really good. He’s been doing it for a long time. He has a bunch of records out under smaller labels. And Subtitle is putting out records still. He has one out and another one coming. He’s the first guy who raps. They’re both kind of weird in a conventional sense, in terms of their flow and subject matter. Subtitle is definitely the more out-there kind of guy. He’s got a new record coming out that’s really good. I just heard it and it’s on a small label. I hope it does really well. It’s really good.

AM: Do you know when that’s supposed to come out?

ND: I don’t, maybe in a couple of weeks or in October, but it’s called “Terrain to Roam.” And Bus Driver’s record is coming out in January or February.

AM: I’ll check it out. I really dug what they did on your album.

ND: I think we’re still… Jamie left the band, left Islands, but that was kind of a Corn Gangg song. Th’ Corn Gangg was a project that Jamie and I had. It was what we were working on in L.A. It was rap. Subtitle and Bus Driver basically rapping with beats that Jamie and I made. Even though he left the band, I still think we’re going to work on that, which is exciting because those guys are talented rappers and I still get to work with Jamie.

AM: Do you two still have a solid relationship despite him leaving the band?

ND: Well, for a couple of weeks it was really tough. He broke the news on tour. I stopped talking to him. There was just no communication. I was really upset and shocked. But now we’re at a point where we’re cool. I don’t see him. He is kind of on his own path. He doesn’t live in Montreal anymore, so I don’t see him. But we talk over e-mail. Before he left and before I left for our European tour we hung out a little bit. So we’re cool. We’re trying to mend that friendship, because it was a good solid friendship underneath all that. And it’s important to maintain.

AM: I’ve understood that his reasoning for leaving the band wasn’t so much a personal issue (Well, I mean, it was personal issue for himself.) with you.

ND: No. No. It had nothing to do with the way the band was being run or the way our relationship was deteriorating. It was nothing like that at all. Jamie just had a complete life change. He woke up one day, I guess, and just realized that it wasn’t what he wanted to do. He wanted to lead a different kind of life. You know, he had to act on that and follow through with his…his…own life. So he did.

AM: This kind of jogged my memory in terms of what I wanted to ask you before. You were talking about how on the next record a lot of the subject matter is just basically living, life.

ND: Yeah.

AM: It seems, I guess, on first take, an obvious thing to cover. At the same time it seems so un-often that people grasp their existence.

ND: Yeah. Yeah.

AM: Just getting caught in day-to-day things and not realizing that you’re alive.

ND: For sure. You know, there are a myriad of ways to express that. It is such a seemingly simple concept, but at the same time it is actually quite complex. There are a lot of complex ideas that people have grappled with for thousands of years. It’s the furthest thing from being trivial. It’s truly trying to get in touch with being a live, which is very temporary.

AM: Well I look forward to the next album any sights on when that we’ll be coming out?

ND: I think we’ll start recording in December and finish up in January. Hopefully, we’ll have it out by the spring or next fall. That’s the plan, anyway.

AM: As I said, I look forward to it and to seeing you later this fall in New Orleans.

ND: Cool. Thanks man.

AM: Yeah. Thank you, too.

ND: Ok. Take care.

The first few times I listened to Sufjan Stevens’ Seven Swans and Illinois (for some reason I had neglected to get Greetings from Michigan!), I heard a delicate guy and his banjo, but I had a perpetually quizzical look whenever someone would talk about him as the zeitgeist. But then came Hurricane Katrina and everything crashed down in this strange, wonderful city in which we live: our faces were long, our resolves fragile, and it seemed impossible to listen to any music. The all-too-familiar sounds reminded of us a time before.

On one of my many 12-hour round trips from my transplanted life in Houston, I popped in Sufjan in the car…and suddenly, I understood. Here was a man who manages to create a classical sound with his instrumentation, creates highly stylized orchestrations, and yet, manages to keep his vocals pure. His voice is reassuring and tender.

So, Tuesday, September 19, 2006 was an anticipated night because Sufjan would be playing here, in our scrappy city, at the House of Blues. Tickets sold out a week before the show, and there were myriad people hoping for extra tickets.

Sufjan’s opener unnaturally claimed the audience as her own, My Brightest Diamond, really, the lead singer Shara Worden, is on his Asthmatic Kitty label. Worden served as one of his cheerleaders on his Illinois tour and upon gentle coaxing by Stevens, recorded the recently released Bring Me the Workhorse. With a voice like a synergy of Jeff Buckley, Beth Gibbons (Portishead), Tori Amos, and Mia Doi Todd, Worden managed to gain the respect of the crowd and within the first three songs, people were transfixed. She shared some members of Sufjan’s string section and powered through songs from her album with big electric guitar confidence. The title song, “Workhorse,” was even richer than on the record, and she delighted with a quickly-recognized and crowd-enthusing cover of Nina Simone’s “Feelin’ Good.” She endearingly said that she had lived in New Orleans as a child, and that her six-year old memory is that of her brother being born here. Luckily, when her set ended, we ended up seeing more of her as she came out to play the glockenspiel for Sufjan’s set.

The entrance of Sufjan and entourage (a total of fourteen people) was hushed and then the roar of the crowd was deafening as it realized that not only were the performers wearing butterfly and bird wings, but local traditional mardi gras masks (which many continued to wear for the duration of the performance). Mr. Stevens took his place at the piano, and a video projection of various images of Chicago and Detroit took form behind him. Each band member was serious, deliberate and stayed close to the sheet music conscientiously organized in his or her own binder. Mr. Stevens said a very respectful thanks for being in the room with us, managing to stay away from triteness about the events of the city. He spiritedly led the band through “Lord God Bird,” “Jacksonville,” “Decatur,” “Mr. Supercomputer,” “Night Zombies,” “To Be Alone With You,” and a crowd-pleasing “Chicago.” By far, the performance of “Casimir Pulaski Day” was the highlight of the night with its quick introduction of the song “being about a Polish-American Revolutionary War hero.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Stevens neglected to acknowledge the frantic shouts of the crowd for the haunting “John Wayne Gacy, Jr” (only to play it a few nights later and elicit whimpers of jealousy out of this writer). An encore elicited a smaller sound (of only 5 people), but was nonetheless rich, on “That Dress Looks Nice On You” from Seven Swans. Stevens also trotted out a new sweeping song called “Majestic, Snowbird” which he claimed was why the performers were all in wings. Even though the venue was the most crowded I had seen, the hundreds-strong crowd was so enamored and quiet that during songs you could clearly hear the faux-shutters of camera-phones taking crappy illegal photos from hundreds of feet away. Regardless of any of the modern distractions, the music was timeless and the performance all together too short. As we filed out into the warm, muggy night, there was a feeling that we had just shared a unique experience that would not be bested easily.

The Islands are coming! The Islands are coming to the House of Blues in New Orleans on November 19. Low and behold their tour has already started and their Decatur Street show is still nearly two months away. And that is a very long time to live with our Paul Revere-esque excitement. So as a small treat to us all, we here at AudioMonger sat down with Nick Diamonds to discuss: the good life, comics, great conspiracies of Rock-n-Roll, the departure of J’aime Tambeur, and grappling with our own existence. We are such, such martyrs. Enjoy.

Nick Diamonds: Hello.

AudioMonger: Hey, Nick.

ND: Hey. How’s it going, man?

AM: Good. How are you?

ND: Been better…

AM: Been better? What’s wrong, man?

ND: [indecipherable]

AM: I’m sorry…

ND: I just said, “I’m naked…” in my apartment.

AM: Laughs. Well alright.

ND: I’m living the good life. Turns out, I’m livin’ the good life.

AM: Yeah…Alright.

ND: Yeah. How are you doing?

AM: Good, tired. I’m in Chicago for the first time.

ND: Oh. Cool. I love that city.

AM: I like it too, man. It’s got a lot going on.

ND: Where are you from originally?

AM: Louisiana.

ND: Cool.

AM: Yeah. Well I’m just going to pick a spot to start and jump right in. I noticed on your website that you have a link to McSweeney’s (www.mcsweeneys.net).

ND: A link to McSweeney’s?

AM: Yeah. I’ve been a fan of that site and Dave Eggers for a while now. Are you a fan as well?

ND: Yeah. Yeah. Totally, man, I’m a fan: Dave Eggers, McSweeney’s, the pirate store, the whole deal… Everything those guys do is really cool.

AM: Have you been to the pirate store?

ND: Yes, I have. I actually went a couple years ago when I was first there. It was quite enjoyable to be in the midst of so many pirate things.

AM: When I went to San Francisco that was one of my first stops, as well. It really was quite something to see all the tubs of fat and all that.

ND: Yeah. Those big tubs of lard…

AM: Do you do any writing outside of lyrics?

ND: Yeah. I write comic books. That’s the other thing I’m doing right now. I have a little, like, place where I put them up on this little blog I’ve created. I can give you the link to it if you would like.

AM: Yeah. I would like that. Hold on one second

ND: Always into broadening my…

AM: So what is it?

ND: howiedoo.blogspot.com

AM: What kind of comics are you writing?

ND: All sorts: goofy and creepy.

AM: Are you illustrating those as well?

ND: Yeah. Yeah. I’m drawing them.

AM: Is it at all similar to another link on your site, www.paperrad.org?

ND: Hmm. It is an influence, but their more fucked up than me. They’ve done more acid than I have.

AM: Yeah. It’s pretty out there, man. It’s hard to look at for too long.

ND: Definitely. I’m, uh, I’m a little more into the cuter side of life.

AM: So what kind of subjects are you dealing with?

ND: Drug use, deformity, space invaders, schizophrenia, all the cute, goofy stuff.

AM: Yeah. Schizophrenia is real adorable.

ND: Well you can make it adorable. Just have a cartoon dog have it.

AM: I’ll have to check it out. When do you start the tour?

ND: We’re starting in, like, a week, about a week and a half. Yeah. Actually, we start a week from today and then we tour for two months.

AM: Do you like touring?

ND: It’s great. I mean you can’t complain, but I think it could be a little more balanced. A two month tour is a little long. But it’s a blast. I really can’t complain. You get to be a traveling salesman, you know. And you get to see a lot of small towns, and a lot of people.

AM: Is there anywhere you’re going that you’re particularly looking forward to or somewhere you haven’t been before?

ND: Um. Well, we’re going to New Orleans and the band that I’m in has never been there, so that is going to be exciting. I’ve been there once before with another band, but I definitely look forward to that. I haven’t been there since the hurricane, either. How’s it doing?

AM: It depends where you are in the city, I guess. If your Uptown it seems a lot more normal, but other areas…You’ll have a random house in a deserted neighbored that has a green lawn, while everything else around it is still dead.

ND: Wow. Wow.

AM: I mean to some extent it is getting back together, but for the large part it’s still really messed up. A lot isn’t going right.

ND: Shit. I mean it’s a pretty big scandal… big scandal.

AM: Did it get a lot of coverage in Canada?

ND: Yeah. We heard a lot about it. You know there were a lot of question marks about why it took so long to get help, and where people were being sent and how the people were being treated. A lot of criticisms about the administrations handling of the crisis, or not treating it as such, I guess. It all just seemed pretty fucked up.

AM: Definitely. Pretty fucked up. So, to go back to the tour, what can we expect, any tricks up your sleeve?

ND: Maybe creepy seven foot tall dancers or eight foot tall dancers. Just some really tall dancers, we might have some creepy eight foot tall dancing spider people.

AM: Well I look forward to that.

ND: Yeah, that’ll give you nightmares.

AM: [Laugh] So, I’ve noticed you talking about creepy stuff a few times, what kind of stuff do you like to read or art that enjoy? Or is that style just something you prefer to do creatively?

ND: Right. Well, um, yeah. I don’t read, like, R.L. Stine or anything like that. Yeah. I like fucked up art, like the PaperRad stuff. In terms of literature, the books that I read or really more, like, classic novels or whatever. I really don’t land on too many weird, esoteric, occult things. But I like this one book I read on rock conspiracies. I read it a couple of years ago. It was really creepy. It talked about how all these people who died mysteriously were killed by the C.I.A. or had something to do with the C.I.A. killing them. And it’s pretty fucked up. Bob Marley and John Lennon and Brian Jones, the original Rolling Stone, and all these other guys…

AM: What was the name of that book?

ND: Conspiracy of Rock or something, I can’t even remember what it was called. It was so good, though; so, like, insane. After a while you just have to kind of take a step back or you’ll really get sucked into this paranoid reality that everyone in the government is out to get you. But there are some pretty convincing arguments for some of these people, like Jimi Hendrix, who was found by his girlfriend. He drank, or he had apparently choked on his own vomit. But the weird thing is that… Or he drowned on a bottle of wine and then kind of choked. But the fucked up thing is that the alcohol hadn’t absorbed into his blood stream. So it was as if he downed an entire bottle of red wine in a matter of seconds. You’re just not physically able to do that, unless someone is force feeding you. You know?

AM: Yeah.

I saw Art Brut at Jacks earlier in the year and absolutely loved them. While Bang, Bang, Rock and Roll is indeed great, it’s nowhere near as good as their live show. Up-and-coming indie rockers We Are Scientists are the coheadliners for the evening. The Spinto Band will start the night off. Doors open at 9PM and tickets are $10. This will be an excellent show.

England’s most prominent house duo Felix Burton and Simon Ratcliffe, better known as Basement Jaxx, have been putting out Prince-worshipping funky house since the early 90’s. Their diverse and eclectic style has evolved over the decade resulting in their 2003 album Kish Kash, a testament to the unbridled fervor of maximalist house. But they are no more immune to the inexorable march of time than any other band and for better or worse, we find in their latest album Crazy Itch Radio a more mature and subdued Basement Jaxx shying away from the excesses of their past work.

Crazy Itch Radio doesn’t deviate from the Basement Jaxx formula of a stellar cast of guest vocalists and a healthy dose of musical eclecticism. The concept behind the album is a loose narrative of the trials and tribulations of an everyday romance, lending the album a thematic unity not seen in their earlier LP’s. The Latin rhythms of “Hush Boy” tell the tale of a less-than-perfect dinner at a Mexican restaurant, while the bouncing banjos of “Take Me Back to Your House” describe the encounter from a female perspective. As the story unfolds, the album continues its frenetic shifts in style with the riotous Gypsy saxophones of “Hey You” and the hyperactive hooting chorus of the samba-inflected “Run 4 Cover”.

Sadly, the album begins to settle into a plodding R&B groove by the midpoint of the album and the last half of the album is something of an unfulfilled promise, as the Jaxx close out with uninspired house cuts that never come close to matching the ecstatic kitsch of “Good Luck” or “Romeo.” “Everybody” reaches hard for an elusive hook but instead settles for a sped-up Bollywood sample, while album closer “U R On My Mind” fades to black without ever establishing a sense of identity and finality.

In the end, the Jaxx have fared far better than most musical acts that have lasted this long. Well into their second decade of existence, the duo still have a seemingly endless supply of musical ideas and no shame in their cultural pilfering. Crazy Itch Radio is subdued and at times predictable, but it’s only glaring fault is that it never aspires to reach the heights of the previous Jaxx albums, instead settling to be a enjoyable album content to follow the formula set forth by its predecessors, albeit with a great deal more restraint. Still, at the end of the day I’d take an average Jaxx record over most any other house album, a testament to the enduring playfulness and inventiveness of those two oddball Brits.

Grade: B